


Apples and Dandelions

by theclaravoyant



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: (verbal only), Fitz backstory, Gen, Multi, abuse mention, some references to past verbal abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 04:45:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9584156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclaravoyant/pseuds/theclaravoyant
Summary: After Fitz' father sends a number of threatening messages and an ultimatum to Shield, Fitz decides it's time to confront his father. As it turns out, the apple can fall as far from the tree as it likes, especially when there's someone there to catch it.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [agentcalliope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentcalliope/gifts).



> A potential-future-fic based on the 'Fitz' dad as the Big Bad' concept. Contains some references to canon compatible past (verbal) abuse, and themes of manipulation (via blackmail, not brainwashing etc).

It’s the fourth time Jemma’s checked that his tac vest is sitting properly. He’d be annoyed by now if his attention weren’t swamped in his own anxieties. As it is, she works around his twisting, flapping fingers without a word. She knows the vest is fixed, she just needs something to fret over that isn’t quite directly related to the fact that Fitz is about to enter a dangerous, unpredictable confrontation with a man he barely knows, but who has his emotions on a knife’s edge. 

“You shouldn’t be going.” Daisy’s standing on the other side of them, by the table, biting a nail but otherwise keeping her body as still as possible, as if unlocking her feet from this position will result in her forcibly stopping Fitz from leaving. “It shouldn’t be you.”

Fitz shakes his head, and though he wishes his tone could sound a bit more solid when he says it aloud, he stands by his words. 

“I have to go. This the man that thinks _I’m_ an idiot, and he wants to take us down. I won’t let him play mind games with you – he’ll have us all at each other’s throats or our own before we know what hit us. No. It’s too dangerous. It has to be me.”

“It has to be _us,”_ Jemma corrects him. Mack comes in to stand by Daisy, and May hovers by the door, a visual reminder that he’s not alone. Fitz smiles a little. It hurts his heart to let them follow him, to let them endanger themselves on his behalf, but he knows they’d never have it any other way. 

“Right. Us.” He squeezes Jemma’s hand and she smiles up at him, a proud if slightly sorrowful smile. She’s worried too. 

“Fitz,” May beckons. “It’s time.” 

He sighs and clips his pistol into its holster. He looks around at the team solemnly and it feels a little like they’re seeing him off to war. 

“We’re right here,” Daisy reminds him. They’ll be on comms the whole time. Right beside him. He finally manages to force the air out of his lungs and draw in more, and follows May with his head held high. 

- 

Standing at the door, Fitz feels a metallic tang in his mouth. He wonders if his arms might suddenly become so weak he can’t push the door open. He wonders if his tongue is going to stick to the roof of his mouth, or if the sight of his father will manage to chase the words away to behind that white sheet of aphasia. He can only imagine what would happen then. 

Clenching a fist, he listens to Daisy’s steady breathing on the other end of the comm link. At this very moment she’s sitting in a room full of everyone who loves him. Everyone he is about to stop his father taking away.

Fitz pushes the door open and finds it easy. Surprisingly easy. Almost suspiciously so. But then it clangs shut behind him, a dry sound that seems to cut through the air in this place, and suck it out. It feels like he’s been swallowed by something; a giant whale made of concrete and steel.

 _“Fitz,”_ Jemma breathes, and he nods – reassuring her, reassuring himself. 

He steps forward slowly, an ant…not quite an ant, a cat perhaps, in this giant space. The warehouse towers above his head and stretches out all around. He wonders if anyone would be able to hear him scream standing at the other end of it, and he wonders by what miracle they couldn’t already hear his heart. Slowly, frustratingly slowly, he makes his way to a table in the middle of the room. There’s a setup of servers and crates around it – a makeshift computer lab – and two men in black stand guard with machine guns almost as long as Fitz is tall. 

“Leopold.” 

He doesn’t recognise the voice, of course he wouldn’t, but it grates on him. It’s the voice that cuts through him like a knife every time someone uses his first name, and though he’s forgotten what it sounds like he remembers how it feels. Like it’s turned his heart black, rotting and hollow. Like whoever speaks it has the power to carve his insides out and make him nothing. 

“Arthur,” he greets in return. It doesn’t carry the same weight – a power play is not nearly as strong when it’s that obvious – but it makes him feel a little better. It makes him feel at least like he can try, even when his father waves the guards away and snorts with laughter.

Fitz’ father shakes his head, drawing himself slowly out of the chair in the midst of the lab setup as if he’s about to coach an overzealous child out of their dreams. Fitz would hardly consider being summoned under the threat of, essentially, the blackmail-and-or-torture of his closest friends to be a dream, but as long as his father doesn’t try to touch him or charm him or _Leopold_ him again, he might just be able to stomach it. 

“Why did you come here?” Fitz’ father asks. Fitz is confused for a second, and feels a flare of anger in his chest, and something akin to hurt. 

“You…told me to. You told me to come.” 

The warehouse swallows his words and he regrets having opened his mouth. His father leans in rather than stepping closer, cupping his ear. 

“What’s that?” he teased. “Cat’s got your tongue?” 

“You _told_ me to come!” Fitz shouts – more of a yelp, really, but it’s too late to do anything about that now. His father laughs again and it sends a shiver down his spine. 

“No, no, my dear boy. I told you to _prove yourself.”_

“How?”

He hears it almost immediately, as if another set of doors has clanged shut behind him. He’s walked right into his father’s trap, fallen into a pit he may not be able to climb back from. His father’s mocking smirk spreads into a hungry grin, watching, waiting for Fitz to trip over himself, just like this. To prove him right.

His father gestures to a set of folders on the table and Fitz can’t help but follow the gesture to study them. Basic manila folders, some thicker than others, laid out overlapping each other. In small, surprisingly neat, hauntingly familiar handwriting he sees at the top of each, names are written. _Lance Hunter. Bobbi Morse. Antoine Triplett._

Fitz lifts his eyes back up and his father must be able to see the fear in them. 

“Tell me something I don’t know,” he commands. 

-

Jemma takes another deep, calculated breath. 

_1…2…3. Out, 2…3…_

_1…2- 3. No, it’s okay, breathe, 2…3…_

The seconds stretch on. Long, painful seconds. She wonders if anyone else is as worried as she is, and tries not to rock from one foot to the other. As it is, her fingers are already buried in the top of Daisy’s chair. Is it distracting, the way she bristles? It’s not like she could do much more than she’s doing about it anyway. 

“D’you think-“ she requests haltingly. “Could we get- by any chance – a visual?” 

Daisy almost lunges at the keyboard. She’s been sinking herself into a meditative state, not very successfully, for the last few minutes and her heartbeat is at a reasonable if high level and she hasn’t broken anything yet, but she’s been dying for someone to ask. Dying to _do something_ even if it’s not race out there and give Fitz backup, or beat his father into the dust. 

The CCTV at the warehouse has been deactivated, and most of the cameras have been smashed for good measure, but eventually, Daisy finds something. Her fingers hover. 

“What?” Jemma wonders, and Daisy can hear the tightness of her chest in her voice. “Why aren’t you doing things?” Some computer nonsense would be really comforting right now. 

“I think…he knows,” Daisy explains. “All the other cameras are destroyed except this one. Is it like a supergenius evil villain to forget to dismantle the surveillance of his lair? One specific item of surveillance?” 

Jemma presses her lips together. 

“Could you do it, though?” Coulson wonders, passing a foam ball from one hand to the other. He only squeezes it with the flesh-and-blood one; in the other, it would burst. 

“Of course.” 

“Then do it,” Mack suggests. “If Fitz knows we’re here and _he_ knows we’re here, we might as well actually be there.” 

Daisy takes a deep breath. She checks the other faces in the room and decides she has the go-ahead, so she taps in and brings the last surviving camera under control. And of course, it’s the one with the best view of both Fitz and his father, standing on either side of a table that’s surrounded by boxes and cords. They’re glaring at each other like they’re about to have some sort of duel. 

Fitz has one pistol strapped to his leg and another at the small of his back. He hasn't drawn either, and there’s no weapons Daisy can see on his father. Daisy wishes she could comfort herself with the thought that it’s because Fitz’ father doesn’t want to hurt him, but already she can feel the cold creep into her veins. She remembers the way it had clawed at her lungs on the deck of the aircraft carrier; how her heart had struggled to pump and the bridge of her nose had felt like it was going to snap in half; how her knees had given way beneath her as her mother had drawn the life from her with her own two hands. 

Daisy swallows hard and slowly clenches a fist. It’s going to be a long day. 

Then -

 _“Elena Rodriguez,”_ Fitz’ father says, as if it means something. His voice is syrupy. And more Americanised than she’d been expecting. 

It takes a moment, but Daisy jumps. They shouldn’t have been able to hear him. Beside her head, Jemma’s nails clench the chair so tightly Daisy can almost feel the leather and stuffing begin to rip. She wonders what Jemma would do if she got within punching distance of Mr Fitz’ face. Probably the same thing she herself would. Daisy grinds her teeth together. He definitely knows they’re here, and he’s probably going to use that. Should she tell Fitz, not tell Fitz? Her fretting is distracted by his reply:

 _“Colombian,”_ Fitz says. _“Nice voice, nice hair. Probably thinks my Spanish is the most ridiculous thing she’s ever heard.”_

Elena snorts. It’s true, but that doesn’t mean she approves of this _bastardo_ using it against her friend. 

-

“You speak Spanish?” his father challenges. 

Fitz says nothing. He can’t. His Spanish is infamously terrible and his father would only laugh. And the only words he can remember at this very moment are, funnily enough, _ay carumba!_ He could bring up how he learnt Hebrew, Arabic and Latin too, but he has nothing to prove it. How, _how_ could he look mobsters and terrorists in the face and speak and be faced with his father and – 

“Nothing?” His father tuts and shakes his head. “Can’t say I didn’t see that one coming.”

Fitz clenches his fist. He knows, they know, he’s better than this. They’re all in his head, standing right beside him. He has to remember. He is better in every way than his father believes him to be. He is worthwhile and he is standing here and he is going to get out of this game.

“But you didn’t _know_ it,” he points out. That was the challenge, after all, wasn’t it? He raises an eyebrow at his father and maybe – just maybe – catches a flicker of respect. Then his father puts Elena’s file down and picks up another, and Fitz feels like he’s just stepped up a level in difficulty. 

“Lincoln Campbell.”

“Made great popcorn.” Fitz smiles, a little bitterly, and hopes Daisy gets a smile out of it to, even though his father shoots him a glare. Technically, though, Fitz has beaten the game, so he slaps the file down with irritation and picks up another. He points at Fitz with it, jabbing the air, irritated at the table between them. He grinds his teeth together. He put it between them, he can take it away. 

Fitz’ father rounds the table, and watches a shiver of fear run through his son. It’s taking all Fitz has not to take a step back, but he resists. His father jabs the file at his chest one more time. The manila card bends and flexes, harmless against his tac vest, but he starts to itch, claustrophobic all of a sudden in this giant space. 

“No more tricks,” his father growls. “Facts. Proof.” 

Fitz nods before he even knows what he’s doing. Not that it matters; he doesn’t have any choice. Still, he clenches his fist and stops himself. The stakes are getting higher. He must keep control. He _must._ He _can._

“Jemma Simmons.” 

“Scoliosis adjustment surgery when she was twelve.”

Medical records were the first thing he thought of and he knows so much about Jemma that it leaps from his tongue. His father’s clearly not expecting that, but doesn’t give him the satisfaction of showing it for long before folding Jemma’s file carefully, pointedly closed. He puts it on the table in a separate file of things to follow up on.

“She also has a scar on her leg from where she stitched herself up on an alien planet,” Fitz adds, his blood burning. He relishes the burst of confidence. “But they don’t have much in the way of medical records in space.”

“Then it can’t be proven,” his father points out, feigning indifference. “So we move on. Alphonso Mackenzie. Mack, isn’t it?”

-

Fitz is frozen, not the video, that much Daisy can tell. She looks around at the others uncertainly. They can feel the tension in this room almost as if they’re down in the warehouse. They’re all looking at each other. Jemma is looking at Mack. Mack is staring at the screen, waiting, listening. Fitz seems stuck on what to say. He can’t play games anymore, for fear of whatever his father has in waiting, but he can’t say anything he can’t prove, either – like about the shotgun-axe. Mack wonders if Fitz remembers he has a brother. That, he could prove. But that might mean putting more people in danger, and maybe Fitz is avoiding it on purpose. There must be something else.

“Give me that,” Mack says gruffly, reaching a hand out to Daisy. She unclips the comm unit from the console and passes it over to him, curious. Elena is watching him with a solemn expression, and as Mack leans over the counter with a tight sigh, she rests a hand on his shoulder. 

“Hey,” Mack greets Fitz, who does a very good job of not reacting too much to the new voice in his ear. “Tell him – Tell him I had a daughter, born April 16, 2006. Hope, her name was.”

 _“Her name was Hope,”_ they hear Fitz echo. His eyes drop to the floor for a moment, feeling the weight of it settle over him. Mack has never mentioned her before and tears fill his eyes as he thinks about the implications of it all. Especially _had._

Mack puts the comm unit back in its setting and everyone in the room lowers their eyes, one by one, giving him as much space as they can, and feeling bad for staring. Daisy’s eyes drift meaninglessly over the console, her heart aching with the knowledge that now two of her friends are suffering instead of one, and she almost doesn’t notice Fitz raise his clenched fist on the video. She sees, but doesn’t register it, until Fitz shouts over something his father says –

 _“Well he would’ve been a better dad than you were!”_

_-_

Fitz’ dad raises his eyebrows. 

“Excuse me?” 

No turning back now. Fitz can see his heartbeat in his eyes and it feels like he’s facing down anyone who’s ever betrayed him. 

“He would have been a better dad than you were,” he repeats, in a low, dangerous voice. He maps out, in his head, what he’s going to do if his father tries to attack him. He’s got two pistols, he could get at least one up. He could duck under the table. He could knee him in the groin. 

“Hope,” his father growls back, “is dead. How much fathering’d your friend get to do in four days, hm?” 

A vision flashes into Fitz’ head, of Mack holding a tiny baby girl, so softly, like a bird. He opens his mouth and no words come out, it’s so violently horrible to think that he’s handed over that image, that vulnerability to his father. 

“Huh?” His father challenges the ceiling and the walls. “How much? Did you read her stories? Did you wipe her arse? Did you throw a little baseball around or listen to her natter on about bloody _monkeys_ all day?” 

Fitz looks around, his heart pounding, his eyes awash with fury and tears. 

 _“It’s alright,”_ Daisy assures him, just before his father booms: 

“Did you think I wouldn’t have my own team checking up everything you say? Did you think I’d sit here, in perfect view of the camera – “ he points to the only working one, the one Daisy’s hacked – “and let you watch me like some sadistic voyeurs? No, no, Leopold. You have your friends, I have mine. And there’s only one friend of yours I can think of that could have given _my_ friends this much trouble.” 

He pauses at the table, and taps his fingers on the cover of the last remaining file. There’s only one friend, Fitz knows, who is glaringly left. And it’s the thickest file on the table. Fitz laughs – a cold, hollow, pained laugh like a man who knows the circumstances of his death are going to be particularly ironic. 

“This was never about me at all, was it?” he checks. “You always wanted Daisy. This whole time. Of course you did.”

The tension in the room is no longer suffocating him. It crackles through him, like electricity. Like fury in his veins, and sickening terror, working together to keep him alive because if he doesn’t get out now, it’s too late.

“Okay, okay, something you don’t know –“ the words are springing from his lips now, everything he’d wanted to say since he’d walked in here. “- _I am never going to give her to you._ No matter what you do or say, or try to goad me into doing or saying. No matter how stupid or worthless you’re going to try to make me think I am…no matter how you blackmail me, or my friends, none of us are ever going to give her to you because we _love_ her. And she sure as hell loves me more than you ever did. 

"And you know what? I thought she was a pain in the ass, too, when I first met her. High school dropout, unqualified hacker-slash-troublemaker. I thought she was going to get us all killed, I really did, but she ended up saving my life. A lot of times. In more ways than one. Okay?

"And she reminded me that – that just because people don’t treat you with love, it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it and it doesn’t mean you can’t be loving anyway. And she taught me that you can be brilliant - _Absolutely. Brilliant._ \- without abusing yourself over it and without jumping all those hoops you held out for me.”

Blood singing with freedom, Fitz pulls the pistol from the small of his back and points it dead at his father’s chest with a surprisingly steady hand. He peers down the barrel for a moment to check his aim, and then stares into his father’s eyes. He seems to be finding this amusing. Well. Fitz’ eyes glint with steel, and he tightens his grip. The hurt and fury and liberation are eating him up like a storm, it’s exhausting, but he just has to cling to it for a few more seconds… 

“And do you know what else she taught me, Da?” Fitz breaths, his voice low and dangerous. He steps up – one, two, three strides, until the nose of his pistol is pressing firmly into his father’s chest. His father looks down at him with a sardonic expression, as if the barrel pressed to his chest would do no more damage than a water pistol. _Go on then,_ he’s saying. _Go on then, if you’re so Good._

Fitz smiles, and finds it surprisingly easy to do so. He’s been expecting this exact reaction. Perhaps he does have more of his father’s manipulation skills in him than he’d thought. 

“She taught me, _I don’t need you to tell me who I am.”_

And then he pulls the trigger. 

(It’s an Icer, of course, and the team come down as quickly as possible to help him clean up and clear out the operation. Then Daisy hugs him so tight and for so long, he forgets what it feels like to stand alone.)


End file.
